Finding the Next Outlet for Recruiting Talent (Tips to Stay Ahead of Other Recruiters)

Want to find the next outlet for recruiting talent? For starters, stay clear of recruiting communities, HR sites and your recruiting industry peers. Step "outside of the box" and your comfort zone with those in recruiting and HR, and get a completely new perspective. I was an early adopter of popular recruiting destinations today including LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Currently I'm working with newly emerging location-based recruiting technologies for mobile recruiters using Foursquare and Loopt. I credit my early adoption and findings to three main areas: social sites, blogs and news destinations, and content channels. If used properly, you too can stay ahead of the curve in the ever changing recruiting landscape. Here's some additional insight and tips into these areas.

Camp Out on Social Sites

Keying in on social sites should be a top priority for recruiters. With these sites, it's one thing to follow conversation from other recruiters and your peers, but it's another thing altogether to get an outsiders opinion. Friend, follow and listen to the wisdom of the crowds on Twitter and Facebook in particular. There are a variety of tools to help you get started with these social sites. TryTweetDeck and work to customize your columns with prominent people in the technology space, as well as people in marketing, sales and other areas that have some relevancy and crossover into recruiting. Pay attention to how people in these fields are being successful at their jobs and what tools, sites and strategies they are implementing to stay ahead of the pack. Check Tweetmeme to see what is popular on any given day. Look at popular Twitter lists on Listorious, as well as directories onWeFollow and Twitr to discover new people. I highly recommend Robert Scoble and his lists to get your feet wet here. Also in Twitter, watch the "trending" topics from your home page which will give you an indicator on what's most actively talked about. Regarding other networks, make sure to pay attention to conversations in technology and marketing related groups on Facebook and LinkedIn. Don't forget about Ning communities, Yahoo Groups and even MySpace. Active on your mobile? Check out MocoSpace, a mobile-based social network.

Consume Blogs and News Destinations

The saying goes that the best recruiters and sourcers are also the best researchers. Well, start digging! The blogosphere has millions of resources for recruiters to tap into for knowledge. Start with high trafficked and popular tech blogs such asTechCrunch, Mashable, Wired, Fast Company, GigaOm and ReadWriteWeb. Subscribe and scan their articles daily. Make it a best practice. You'll uncover scores of newly emerging trends and technologies that, while not necessarily intended for recruiters, a good majority will prove to be useful for finding and recruiting talent. Next, try news aggregators such as Alltop,Techmeme, POPURLS and Topicfire for hot topics and interesting articles. These will lead to new discoveries for recruiters to find talent directly or indirectly. View articles and videos on mainstays such as CNN and The Wall Street Journal. If you're unsure of the most trafficked and popular sites on the web, go to Alexa or Technorati for a quick rundown. To manage the shear volume of information found in blogs, go with Google Reader and also try ScoutLabs, a tool which can help you monitor the blogosphere and various news sites across the web. Additionally, go to your local bookstore or public library and hit the business section hard. Recently published books that should be on your radar screen include Trust Agents and Engage. Finally, don't forget your local newspaper to read up on area businesses and activities. You'll be surprised what you can still find in a good newspaper!

Learn from Content Sharing Channels

Another great avenue for finding new recruiting outlets are content sharing channels spread out across the web. Take a pass byDigg, StumbleUpon and Reddit to see what are the most shared articles and popular sites. Popular bookmarking tools to note are Delicious and Diigo, where users tag, bookmark and share their latest discoveries on the web. Make sure to comb through users, groups, lists and tags on these sites. RSS feeds can be set-up for any of these sites, groups and areas within each, allowing you to funnel every result into your Google Reader for a one-stop shop of content daily. Make sure to read up on featured and hot topics on Slideshare, Scribd and Docstoc, as well as YouTube to get a sense of what other companies are doing to market and brand themselves. Another channel to keep a pulse on is MarketingProfs. It's a low-cost membership site filled with marketing resources including videos, articles, case studies and presentations relating to everything from social media to cutting-edge technology that you can apply to your recruiting efforts. You will have countless ideas to work with from here!

[ This post entitled originated by the blog of Geoff Peterson. ]

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Comment by Brian Meeks on May 3, 2010 at 11:26am: Nicely done on the suggestions. There are a few in there that I haven't given much time to. I think I will have to check them out.